Requirements and Mock Ups - Warfighter Made Team Up! - Part 3

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On my previous blogs about Warfighter Made (WFM) and the project that a group of Atlassian users are executing I was able to share the overall scope and idea of the new collaboration environment that we are building to assist ill and catastrophic injured veterans. In this Part 3 I will share how the conversations with Robert Blanton, WFM CEO were converted to Confluence pages with requirements and mock ups.

Defining the idea

The environment will have three main components

Collaboration Environment - Main Home Page		This collaboration environment (Hub) will be mainly developed on Confluence. It will, eventually, replace current webpage and organization landing page. Main components are Home Page Veterans Space - With a page for each veteran (mockup) showing bio, service, and additional information and actively adding information (metadata) of veteran involvement with the organization Sponsors Space - All sponsors will have a page (mockup) with the description of the company/organization and information about the relationship with WFM and actively updated (metadata) with their involvement with the organization Volunteer Space - Each one of the volunteers (including staff) will have their page (mockup) with their own information, relationship with the organization and actively updated with their involvement Events Space - each event will have a page (mockup) with detail information, sponsors involved, veterans involved, volunteers, etc. Metadata from each event will be used to feed individual pages of sponsors, veterans, volunteers, staff, etc. Projects Space - Each project will have a group of pages connected to the corresponding project in JIRA, it will contain information about the project, beneficiary, sponsors, descriptions, picture gallery, design mockups, etc. Metadata used on this space will be used to feed other spaces like veterans, volunteers, sponsors, etc. The space/pages will be restricted to the beneficiary veteran until the project is revealed. After that the information will be public and it will reflect all the activities and people involved on the effort. News and blogposts - The team will frequently upate the news section and publish information and bloposts. The content should be pushed to social media. Calendar - The calendar will reflect past and current events with direct links to the event page. Service - A page/group of pages that will describe the different services and associate WFM related veterans groups per service (Army, Navy, Air Force, etc.) Awards - A page/group of pages that will describe each award/medal/recognition and show the WFM related veterans that are recipients of each one of them
Assistance Desk		The Assistance desk portal (based on JIRA Service Desk) will be available from the home page, initially from current website until we replace the environment. It will have two main components Need Assistance? Want to assist
Project Tracking		Each approved major project will have a project in JIRA and it will be tracked accordingly. The workflow will be simplified and will use a Kanban type of board. No all the projects from WFM will be in JIRA due that they have some small projects as well. The WFM team will decide the criteria to add and track projects in JIRA. With the purpose of tracking general operations we will create an Operations Project.

 Team Up environment - Confluence

Most of the spaces follow a common pattern and we feed content among them by using the macro Page Properties Report and dedicated labels. As starting point and in order to engage the team i drew in paper what I have in mind for the spaces.

The main reason was to encourage those that are participating in our training workshop to convert, using Balsamiq mock up tool, what is in paper into a Confluence page mock up.

Example of one of the informal drawings (Help Center Portal) to be used during the training workshop.

Balsamiq mockup for the Veteran's page

A page for each Warfighter Made Veteran

Goals

• Each veteran involved with Warfighter Made will have a page with key information on it. 
• In addition to the personal information and by using labels, the page will have sections that will be automatically updated.
  
  

Background and strategic fit

This Veterans page is key for the organization so they can relate to each individual and provide personalized assistance and recognition

Assumptions

• Each veteran will receive help from volunteers to initially build the page
• Warfighter Made will provide the list of the first wave of veterans to be uploaded
• WFM will indicate which information should be published and what information should be avoided
• Veteran, family members and WFM staff will provide pictures, posts, videos, and any other material needed to build a good page
• Metadata will be used to reference the veteran on events participation, project volunteer work or beneficiary, etc.

Requirements

1	Veteran Main Picture	Each veteran page will have the veteran picture (current or during service)	It has to have good resolution and a brief paragraph to describe it	On the veterans page we will include more than one picture, but we need to identify which one should be the picture to be used on the header of the page
2	Unique ID Label	Each veteran will have a unique Label ID. (Vet ID)	This unique Vet ID will be used (as the # in social media) to link the veteran to multiple areas of the environment. (e.g. Events, Sponsorship, projects, service, awards, etc.)	Example: rblanton / bfaler
3	Additional Pictures	Each page will have a gallery to show pictures as attached	That will provide to the visitor a broad spectrum of the background of the veteran, activities, friends and family as desired	The picture gallery will be updated as new pictures are added to the page.
4	Bio	In addition to the Main Picture a brief bio will be needed to present the veteran to the community	A Brief bio is important because it will help understanding the story of the veteran, service provided, medals and any other aspect of their life that they would like to share.	WFM Staff will validate and verify the information to be published and work with the veterans on any sensitive information to be presented
5	Service	Tell the story of the veteran service	We can add the seal or service identification with a link to the page and also have more information about deployments or overall service	This is based on the interest of the veterans. Having this information and the metadata we will be able to group veterans per service, deployments, etc.
6	Awards	If desired we can mention medals and recognition received	Optional	The visitor would like to know what type of recognition was awarded to the veteran
7	Events	Autogenerated - Based on Vet ID + EV the list of events where the veterans was involved	By adding the unique Vet ID (Label) and EV to the event pages we will automatically bring the event related information	This will provide a context to the veteran activity related to WFM. Example: rblantonev / bfalerev
8	Projects Participation	Autogenerated - Based on Vet ID + PP the list of projects where the veteran participated as volunteer	By adding the unique Vet ID and PP to the project pages we will be able to generate this section and bring project related information and direct link to the project	Example: rblantonpp / bfalerpp
9	Projects Recipient	Autogenerated - Based on the Vet ID + PR the list of projects where the veteran was the recipient	By adding the unique Vet Id and PR to the project page we will generate this section bringing project information and direct links	Example: rblantonpr / bfalerpr

Having the "casual" mock up created with Balsamiq saved some time during the requirements gathering and design process as we were able to quickly incorporate CEO feedback.

From Mock Up to reality

Despite is still work in progress, here is a quick preview of one of the pages, in this case a Warfighter Made Veteran's page.

Space home page pattern

As we have multiple spaces with the same pattern, the landing (home) page is quite similar and contains a list of the children pages with some key information on it retrieved using the Page Properties Report macro.

Veteran's space Home Page

Sponsors' space Home Page

Using Mock Ups during the design phase of the project

For those that are not familiar with Atlassian could be hard to imagine what can be accomplished with the tool and how to visualize the information radiation. The use of muck ups facilitated that interaction. On the next blog post I will discuss the second component used during the first phase of the project: Gliffy diagramming tool.

More about this project

The goal is to share on this series of blog-posts how we are building the new collaboration platform for Warfighter Made. See below the list of completed and planned blog posts.

• Part 1: Unleashing the power of Collaboration to overcome the Sadness of 22
• Part 2: Onboarding the team to Inspire – Adapt – Overcome
• Part 3: Gathering requirements and using Mock Ups
• Part 4: Requirements and Diagrams
• Part 5: Radiation of information in Confluence and Jira
• Part 6: Empowering the user experience by customizing the Confluence theme
• Part 7: A new theme for Jira Service Desk Portal
• Part 8: User management and qualification from workflow
• Part 9: Hosting an Atlassian Server environment
• Part 10: A 60" Kanban board in a Mechanic Shop assisting veterans
• Part 11: Managing content visibility by user groups